Main menu

Teaching

My teaching interests are closely allied to my research. Since 2010, I have taken over as course director for Medical Entomology (ENT 5275). I teach sections about tick-borne and insect-borne diseases such as Leishmaniasis and phlebotomine flies, the life stages of malaria parasites in mammals and mosquitoes, typhus-group rickettsioses and bartonelloses. I focus these topics on emerging diseases, and relate them to global changes in human land use and climate.

Research

Research in the tick lab focuses on bacteria associated with ticks as tick-borne pathogens or as symbionts, in particular Anaplasma phagocytophilum, the agent of human anaplasmosis, and diverse Rickettsia species. Our research with rickettsiae explores the relationship of symbiotic rickettsiae and ticks with respect to the natural history of rickettsial diseases. We are interested in the cellular and molecular determinants of the “host – vector – pathogen interface” in order to understand how tick-borne pathogens and symbionts respond to cues received through their tick vectors’ activities such as blood feeding. We primarily use cell culture-systems to study the biology of anaplasma and rickettsiae in vectors and hosts by examining gene expression, and by mutagenesis and plasmid transformation for live imaging and functional genomics analyses.

Oliver JD, Oliva Chávez AS, Felsheim RF, Kurtti TJ, Munderloh UG. An Ixodes scapularis cell line with a neuron-like phenotype. Submitted. Exp. Appl. Acarol. UGM isolated and established the cell line, designed experiments, wrote and edited part of the manuscript